Tuesday, July 19, 2016

“If Melania’s speech is similar to Michelle Obama’s speech, that should make us all very happy because we should be saying, whether we’re Democrats or Republicans, we share the same values,” he told reporters after addressing a Florida GOP delegation breakfast at a hotel here 20 minutes outside Cleveland, where the RNC is taking place.

“If we happen to share values, we should celebrate that, not try to make it into a controversy,” he added.

His comments come as Melania Trump faces intense scrutiny over a portion of her Monday night speech that echoed, nearly word for word, part of the first lady’s 2008 address at the Democratic National Convention. The Trump campaign insists that Melania Trump’s speech was not plagiarized, and Carson echoed that.

“I don’t think they were plagiarized. I think there are general principles that are very valuable to Americans, and of course to express those principles you’re going to use similar language,” Carson said.

He would say that, of course:

Carson, a former presidential candidate himself, is no stranger to dealing with fallout from plagiarism. In 2015, he apologized for examples of plagiarism found in his book, “America the Beautiful.”

Pressed on why he apologized then, if he was willing to wave off evidence of plagiarism now, he said as he ducked into a car, “Because I don’t like to keep a controversy going. I like to talk about positive things.”

Meanwhile the rest of the GOP reacts as expected. Paul Manafort blamed it all on Hillary Clinton saying it's yet another example of her smearing any women who opposes her. (No, I don't know how he spit that one out either.) And then there's this: